Today I want to welcome the super-sweet, generous and talented Hope Tarr. I met Hope face-to-face for the first time last year in Chicago during the Romantic Times conference. During the conference, she also read at the Lady Jane’s Salon in Naperville, which was a big coup, because Hope is one of the founders of Lady Jane’s in New York!
Welcome, Hope!
What’s the name of your latest release and a one-line description of the book?
OPERATION CINDERELLA, Book #1 in my Suddenly Cinderella series of contemporary-fairytale themed romances. (Also see Kelsey’s Red Hot Read feature on Operation Cinderella.)
Series overview: Four unlikely Cinderellas are helped along by uber-cool fairy god friends and princess-worthy red stilettos as they meet their matches in contemporary re-tellings of the classic fairytale, beginning with Operation Cinderella wherein a goth-girl editor is paired with a sexy conservative radio talk-show host.
Describe the book’s hero in three words.
Ross Mannon is…smart, self-made, and sexy.
What do you love most about writing contemporary romance?
Setting the books in present day cities I love. OPERATION CINDERELLA and A CINDERELLA CHRISTMAS CAROL (in-series novella) are set in New York City where I live now and Washington, DC where I went to graduate school at Catholic University (just like my heroine!) and later settled.
Book #2, tentatively titled PROJECT CINDERELLA (due out this March/April 2013), is set in New York and Los Angeles; the latter I’ve visited multiple times. In fact, the Westwood bungalows where my Reality TV contestants are lodged look a lot like the one where I stayed with a friend’s family in 2005. 🙂
What’s the last contemporary romance you read that you loved?
Anything–everything–by Lisa Kleypas. 🙂
Reader question from Amy Remus: Do you model characters after people you know?
My characters are composites of people I’ve met. I’m like Dr. Frankenstein in that sense. 🙂 I’ll take one guy’s crazy fascinating mannerism and graft it onto a pair of mesmerizing blue eyes that briefly met mine on the subway.
Do you have any extras or sneak peeks available for readers?
Yes! Readers can find them here: http://www.hopetarr.com/bookshelf/operation.php
Hope Tarr is the award-winning author of twenty historical and contemporary romances and a co-founder and current principal of Lady Jane’s Salon (www.LadyJaneSalonNYC.com) , New York City’s first–and still only–monthly romance reading series, now in its fifth year with four satellite salons nationwide.
Thanks so much to Hope for hanging out at Brain Candy today. Feel free to drop her a question in the comments as she’ll swing by today!
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Today is single tasking day, so I say blow off boring stuff and single task by reading a delicious contemporary romance like Hope’s!
